Pitching
So you've got a great story idea.
How do you get it approved?
PART ONE: THE PITCHING PROCESS
Welcome!
If you work with OCCRP, as either a staffer or a member of our broader network of journalism, the pitch is often the first formal contact you have with our editors. So we wanted to explain as clearly as possible what an OCCRP pitch is, and why it’s important to write a good pitch.
Most publications, when they ask for a pitch, expect you to email a paragraph or two of text explaining the story you have in mind.
OCCRP’s process is more structured, because our stories tend to be very complicated and we often accuse people of serious wrongdoing. So in order to accept a story for publication, we need to see a pitch showing that you understand how to prove your key claims, and that you will be able to file a clear and well-organized draft.
Our pitch form is a way of breaking down what’s needed in an investigation, allowing OCCRP editors to quickly determine (a) what claims you are trying to prove, and (b) what evidence you have to support the claims.
Because it’s so structured, the process of pitching a story at OCCRP can seem daunting, but — trust us on this! — it’s actually fun and satisfying when you get the hang of it.
Please read on for guidance on how to make the process as fast and painless as possible.
How and Why the Pitch Process Works
So you’re a reporter. You’re constantly working on lots of different story ideas, talking to sources, tracking down documents, and firming up your understanding of complex cases.
The goal of all this work is, of course, to come out with a story. But sometimes when you’re following so many leads and doing so much research, it’s hard to see the forest for the trees. The pitch process is designed to get you to zoom out and see the big picture, figure out how all your work fits together, and imagine what a final product could look like.
It’s also your first formal opportunity to convene with OCCRP editors and get feedback on what you’re doing. And it’s the editors’ first opportunity to see your work laid out formally (as opposed to in informal chats, Signal groups, or notes on a Wiki).
We’ve found that –– without fail –– a well-structured pitch makes an investigation easier to write, edit, and get published, just as well-done footnotes make a story easier to fact-check. A well-written pitch can be used as a guide to writing the story, and a valuable reference point during editing.
Conversely, some stories just seem to “get stuck” in the editorial process. The drafts are confusing and they take a long time for editors to understand — and, therefore, to edit. It’s not clear what the proofs for each part of the story are. Or there’s a big logical hole somewhere. Or maybe it just doesn’t hang together. Again, almost without fail, those are stories that were not properly pitched.
This means that we strongly encourage that you pitch all your stories, and put some effort into filling out the pitch form. More on that later, but first let’s briefly run through how the process of pitching a story to OCCRP works.
Once you’ve filled out the form (which can be found here), share it with our coordinating editor, alessia@occrp.org, and/or email it to pitch@occrp.org. Alessia will add it to the list of pitches we’ll consider at our weekly pitch meeting, which takes place every Friday afternoon.
Because we get lots of pitches and they are often quite complex, OCCRP’s core editors take turns leading the meeting, which means you can expect to hear from a different editor depending on the week you’ve submitted your pitch. The lead editor is expected to carefully read all the pitches submitted that week and assess whether they’re ready for discussion. If the pitch doesn’t make sense in some key way, or doesn’t have all its critical information, or isn’t really a story, the editor will get in touch with the author and provide feedback.
If the pitch *is* ready to be discussed, the editor will go through it, note any important questions ahead of time, and try to clarify confusing parts of the pitch, to facilitate discussion during the pitch meeting and save time for the other editors.
Then, every Friday afternoon, we dive in. The pitch meeting attendees — all of OCCRP’s senior editors, plus the core editors who help facilitate the meeting — discuss whether the pitch is clear and comprehensible, whether it seems like the reporter can prove all his or her claims, and whether it seems likely to yield a good story.
We might also talk about what the reporter needs to actually finish the story. Our research and data team participates in the meeting in case we think support in that area is needed. And the group often discusses who would be the best editor to work on the story.
The goal of the meeting isn’t to rip the stories to shreds. On the contrary, usually the discussion is very sympathetic. Instead of rejecting confusing pitches, we try to provide reporters with actionable feedback about what they should be focusing on, or what steps they can take to make the pitch stronger.
We want to come out of the meeting with two goals accomplished.
Reporters should receive meaningful feedback about what they’re doing. Is their story right for OCCRP? Does their angle work? Do we think they should pursue other reporting threads?
Editors should get a clear understanding of what stories reporters are working on. Most of us will end up devoting lots of time and resources to the stories that are greenlit, so it’s beneficial to understand what they’re about in advance, and know the potential problem areas.
By the end of the pitch meeting on Friday, you will know if your pitch has been greenlit (approved for further reporting), in which case you can keep going and file your story with the expectation it will be published by OCCRP; yellowlit, which means we are interested but we feel like there is something missing from the pitch and it needs to be resubmitted; or redlit, which means we do not want the story.
Although redlighting can be a disappointing outcome, it’s also useful for reporters to know that there is not interest from the editors in publishing their story so they do not waste their time. Conversely, although greenlighting is a good sign, it’s still possible that the story might not be published if you do not manage to prove all your critical information, or if the situation on the ground changes.
Filling Out the Pitch Form
The key elements of the form are:
— The hypothesis
— The critical information
— The explanation of what’s new
Everything else is secondary, so keep that in mind when you’re deciding what to focus on.
The hypothesis is your story in a nutshell. What’s the heart of your investigation? What are you trying to prove? If you’re having trouble, think about how you would explain your story in a tweet, or describe it to someone in a single sentence at a bar after work.
The hypothesis will often end up being your nut graf — the paragraph high in your story that sums everything up clearly for readers — so formulating a concise and compelling hypothesis gives you a head start on drafting your story.
Newbies are often tempted to cram as much information as possible into a hypothesis, but keeping things clear and simple is always a better idea. Here’s how simple it can be.
When editors saw this, they immediately understood what the reporter was planning and what his story would look like.
Here’s another example. It’s slightly more complicated and moves into the past to briefly explain key context, but doesn’t go overboard.
A hypothesis for an investigation shouldn’t focus on the context, or announce what the story is “about.” This pitch was not approved because the hypothesis is too vague without providing an investigative focus:
Here’s another hypothesis that misses the mark, by not really giving any information at all.
Then, that same editor went too far in the other direction and provided way too much information.
If you can’t already tell, we rejected that — it’s just too detailed, and that makes it impossible for any reader to get a sense of what he is trying to say.
We asked the editor to try again, and he finally came back with a much better hypothesis.
This hypothesis isn’t perfect, but it does clearly state the investigative focus of the story and outline the alleged wrongdoing (i.e. what the story is trying to prove). This ended up becoming a story in our LuxLeaks project.
What Critical Elements of Proof (a.k.a. “Critical Information” Are, and Aren’t
Most people find the “critical elements of proof” to be the hardest part of the pitch form to understand.
Keep in mind that these critical points are NOT supposed to be a summary of the story in list form, nor are they a list of documents or sources you will consult.
Instead, they are a place for you to break down the key logical elements of your hypothesis into a list. Ideally this list will be structured in order of importance — what is the most important point you need to prove in order for your story to stand up? Then the next, and the next. Imagine building the proof for your story from the bottom up, like a foundation for a house. Then, you’ll add notes on how you will prove each of these critical points. What you end up with, if you’ve done it right, is a prioritized to-do list for your story.
These days, the “list” is actually a grid that looks like this:
We’ve found that this format helps people separate the “what” and the “how” more clearly. But the concept remains the same.
Let’s look at a theoretical example first. A very common hypothesis for an OCCRP story is something like this:
Hypothesis: The president of Zubrowka has way too much money and property that he can’t explain with what he earns.
A basic critical information list for this story could go something like this:
Critical Information:
President owns very expensive real estate
President does not earn a salary that would allow him to buy this real estate.
President has no other sources of income
If we put it into the grid format, it would look like this
Here are some real-world examples. First, here’s how not to approach the critical information list:
This isn’t a critical information list at all — it’s a list of documents and sources. It gives no insight into what the story is actually about. Remember — critical information isn’t the how, it’s the what.
Our editor-in-chief, Drew, rewrote this reporter’s critical information list as we spoke to him at the pitch meeting, and came up with this:
You can see that Drew’s list is just as simple as the reporter’s, but instead of focusing on documents he focuses on IDEAS. Each of these ideas is a part of the bigger story, and reading this list you actually get a sense of what the story is about. Now the reporter can focus on how he will prove each item on the list — how to prove the documents are fake, how to prove that laws are being violated, how to prove the masks are dangerous, and so on.
This one is better, but it is way too vague. It feels like the reporter was just phoning it in. It doesn’t explain what will actually be proven and how these points relate to a possible story.
The one below, on the other hand, provides way too much information — not all of this is critical! It reads like a summary of every single thing the editor found out about this topic:
Here are some better examples. This list (which matches the hypothesis about Chechnya shown above) breaks down the elements of the story that are MOST important — that the leader of Chechnya has additional wives and that these women own property they could never afford on their own.
Here’s another example of a good list:
You’ll see that some of the items on the list are simple and some are more complex, which is fine! Some are provable by documents, but some can only be proven by real-world testing and (in this case) tasting. Points 1 and 2 are the hardest to prove and the heart of the story. Point 6, on the other hand, might be very easy to prove by looking at the law and talking to experts.
Here’s one more example.
This list actually helped reporters decide to kill their own story (which almost never happens!). They realized they would not be able to prove the first point on the list, that Chernovetsky had more money than he could explain, due to an issue with their data. Making a list of critical story elements helped them understand very clearly that they could not move forward without this proof.
What’s New?
Many people give this short shrift, but it’s actually one of the most important parts of the pitch. Finding something new is key to journalism, and it’s one of the things that separates our profession from due diligence or corporate research. We’re not just compiling dossiers or lists of facts — we’re digging up new information of public interest and putting it out into the world for readers to examine and understand.
As editors, when we’re working on a story, “what’s new?” is always the first thing we ask the author, if it isn’t already obvious. Investigations and news stories (as opposed to features) are almost always structured in a way that reveals what’s new very high in the story. If we don’t fully understand the contribution your story makes to the already-existing body of knowledge about your subject, we won’t be able to edit it.
Answering this question can also help you clarify your own reporting by reminding you that you need to focus on the new, rather than falling into a rabbit hole of information that might be interesting, but is already out there.
Lastly, we need you to explain this to us because you, the reporter, know your story and the context better than we do. OCCRP stories are often very complex. That’s why it’s important for you to be able to explain what you are adding to the already existing conversation around this topic.
That’s It!
There’s more to the pitch form, but these are the most important parts and most of the rest will be self-explanatory. To sum everything up, pitch forms aren’t just pro forma. They make writing and editing an investigative story faster and easier.
Remember: A pitch is not set in stone. It’s a living document, and it can change as your reporting changes. Just make sure to check in with your editor when it does. When a filed story doesn’t match the pitch, that’s a red flag and prompts us to take a closer look. We want to know why the story is different, whether the reporters failed to obtain a critical piece of information, and if so, whether the story is still viable.
Perhaps most importantly, don’t stress! Writing a pitch is just the start of the editorial process. It doesn’t need to be perfect. It just needs to get the fundamentals of your story down on paper (or pixels, more realistically). It will help you, and it will help us.
Now go forth and pitch!
Sample Pitches
Here are three examples of good pitches, just as they were submitted, paired with the final story that resulted from them. We've also kept the annotations from editors so you can see what kinds of questions we ask.
Here's a blank copy of the pitch form. Make a copy of this document and fill it out to kick off the editorial process!